The present invention relates to printable materials. More particularly, the present invention relates to ink jet printable materials.
The popularity in recent years of personal computers in homes and businesses has stimulated the development of several types of printers. The earlier, relatively low cost printers were impact or dot-matrix printers which utilized a ribbon and a plurality of pins to place a desired image on a substrate which typically was paper. While the better dot-matrix printers are capable of near letter-quality printing, they typically are both slow and noisy. Laser printers are quiet, produce high-quality images, and can print an excess of four pages per minute. Such printers, however, tend to be too expensive for common use in homes and even in some smaller businesses. Ink jet printers fill the gap between dot-matrix printers and laser printers, both with respect to cost and image quality.
Ink jet inks, however, are aqueous-based systems. That is, the dyes employed in such inks are soluble in water. Thus, substrates printed with ink jet inks have a pronounced proclivity to run or even lose an image in the presence of moisture or water. Accordingly, there is a need for a means of permitting printing on a substrate with ink jet inks, whereby the printed image is durable, especially in the presence of water.